The City Council of New York and the rest of our nation should know about the new developments coming out of The White House and learn from the past (which should have been much better) that could have reduced the Latino gap much sooner.
No, it is not a clothing store. But there is a Latino gap just as there is an African American gap. Sure there are differences among the integral parts of each group just as gaps exist among White people. When Beyond the Melting Pot was written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he spelled out significant differences, for example, between Italians and Jews. Many times during my youth, I heard an Italian tell me we are the same. Similar, yes and it was nice to hear the word “same”, but Jews were much more advanced educationally and Italians were entering “blue collar” trades at that time. I learned at the Schindler Factory in Poland just how advanced Jews were in the major cities of that country before the Holocaust and there were gaps there as well.
Buried inside The White House statement is this “(vi) enhancing student support services and fostering positive engagement among schools, families, community leaders, and community-based organizations to increase the high school graduation and post-secondary attendance rates and decrease the high school dropout rate for Hispanic and Latino students.”
September 13, 2021 Presidential Actions
And two days later, the United States Secretary of Education put this out for Puerto Ricans.
U.S. Department of Education Announces New Actions to Improve Educational Outcomes for Students In Puerto Rico
September 15, 2021
So it is clear that the White House is working hard to make our nation a better place through educational attainment.
As people, who know my work are aware, I launched a worldwide effort to help people, contributing to the success of individuals who passed the GED from Bulgaria and Argentina (deported youth). Floridians, who worked for Governor Jeb Bush, know what I accomplished in helping more than ten thousand pass the GED there. I also provided Miami-Dade schools for its parent academy with information about the GED back then. And amazingly politics has passed me by without completely realizing the power of knowledge (I have been down this road with The White House before about a decade ago). But this is my moment and it is highly probable that The Impossible Dream of Don Quixote is going to blend with the magic of Once in a Lifetime. People, who know me, know I never succeeded really after making much history in education and among other things the big moment came when a New York assemblyman and executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council was arrested. I was there and ready to help and my greatest connection ever got arrested and went to jail.
The education secretaries of the United States and Puerto Rico are coming together to provide more assistance to Puerto Rico, including financial assistance that has been badly needed for years since the hurricanes. Things are political and this may be the end of the actions precipitated by the combination of a government that did not govern well (things have been bad for a long time) and Trumpism, which still can be portrayed by Trump’s set shot with a roll of paper towels. Republicans can deny things until they are blue in the face. Blue in the face?
A return to normalcy will include Puerto Ricans and others waking up to the great potential of America, that has not been realized, but at a moment of grave concern precipitated by the pandemic and feelings that another hurricane may follow.
This is a time to come together and learn more to help others. Politics keeps that in limited doses, locally, regionally, and nationally. Our nation needs greater things from its people and from people arriving here with a visa (visa in English too) or with a coyote (human trafficking). It makes me think again of those early days in the Bronx in a church, called the Roca Eterna, where I was with the Reverend Hector Anderson, who was one of my supporters, who spoke and told me and a man standing next to me that he had earned his GED after being in this country only one month. The man, who was from South America (either Ecuador or Peru) told us that he earned his GED after being in this country only for 3 days. That is a lesson for The White House, the secretaries of education mentioned, for Latinos in the USA, and the world. I had my first meeting with Reverend Hector Anderson in the conference room of then Reverend Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. in the Bronx. And one of my articles was published in the Christian newspaper of El Ministro just like that.
And thinking of my work in the Dominican Republic and Dominican communities throughout the United States (although I am the ex-teacher of the Consulate of El Salvador), I found this for the first time.
Buscando visa para un sueño
/translated/
It was nine in the morning
Santo Domingo, January the 8th
and the patience is running out
because there´s no longer a visa for a dream
¡Oh, oh!
And to people from Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia, and other countries, there is a message for all to make this country better. I hope that it rains coffee, education, and visas for a dream or Ojalá que Llueva café y educacion (en el campo) y visas para un sueño.
It is time for Latinos to wake up from the Bronx to Florida to Georgia to Texas to California to Puerto Rico and everywhere not mentioned.
I now feel again
For this is my moment
My destiny calls me
And tho’ it may be just once in my lifetime
I’m gonna do great things
And this is no time to fall into the gap.
.
About Martin Danenberg
Martin Danenberg was a teacher on the Lower East Side of New York and then became a G.E.D. teacher until he retired in 2000. His work is now more known than ever as he has reached out to people in politics and more. His ideas about helping American recently surfaced in the Election of 2020 as Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden spoke out to help people with education.
To learn more, please visit here.
